Ah, the Crystal Cave. As I gaze at it, I know it means my salvation. Salvation from an obsession that has eating away at me since October. What am I talking about? Well, I’ll give you a hint. It starts with Little and ends with BigPlanet.

You see, I haven’t been able to think about anything else. I haven’t been able to do anything else. All I wanted to do is play this game, and I’m not sure why. It was almost like I needed something to make me stop. And that something happened two weeks ago.

You see, my levels, The Fall of Winter and What’s The Matter have very few plays, and I started to feel really bad about myself. I posted a comment that said “Media Molecule hates me” … A few hours later, I received a message from my friend ZX497, creator of the level Anti-Color. The message said simply this: “Media Molecule doesn’t hate you, in fact, they hearted your level, The Fall of Winter” … to which i replied “WHAAAAAAAAA?!” … I went to media molecule’s hearted page, and there it was, right on the first page of their hearted levels. Kink the pumpkin, the icon I chose for that level, was staring right back at me! I was so excited!

It was then that the change occurred. It was then that I was able to say to myself… I’m almost feeling like I can kick this habit. I’m almost feeling like I can finally walk away. There was one final piece of business that had to be taken care of though, before I could be completely okay with it. That piece of business was to finish the Crystal Cave in Autumn.

The Crystal Cave in Autumn was a level that we had started immediately following Centralia. The premise: You travel through an autumy landscape to find yourself in a cave. You go through the colors of the rainbow until you reach red, and then that would be the end of the cave. Larry and I did prototypes for this back in November, and the thermometer was eaten up completely by the time we got to the blue section, and we were both not very happy with it at all, and scrapped it. The level also fell apart, and that was pretty bad, too.

I started the level up again in december and I completely redid everything to make it more compact, but I was still a little emotionally destroyed from the brokeness of cool levels, and a few nasty comments left on the Fall of Winter. But as soon as I found out that Media Molecule approved of The Fall of Winter, something snapped inside of me. I became focused, and I called upon Larry to help me finish the level that I knew would make it so I could finally walk away from the game. Well, from create mode, at least.

The level fell apart a few times, it turned to gas a few times, things kept shifting and breaking for no good reason, and trees kept ungluing, not to mention the mysterious ghost rock that moves every time we do anything in create mode. I didn’t care though, I was finishing this damned level even if my playstation exploded.

I had a few close friends testing it along the way, and somehow, in a very short amount of time we were able to finish it. Not only did we finish it, but it actually ended up looking like I had things planned out from the beginning, which, surprisingly enough, I did not. I don’t really map out my levels before hand (larry does, but i don’t) and this level was just full of happy accidents. I started at one side, ended at the other side, and somehow it looks like maybe I drew out where I wanted things. I’m going to post the few scans I have, jjust so you know I’m not bluffing:

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Above is an area that didn’t end up happening due to space. This level was supposed to be extremely multipath, but the thermometer just wouldn’t allow for it. Also, Box Ghost is saying “What Happened?” at the bottom, and everyone knows that “Happened” is a swear word in this game, so that wouldn’t be able to be utilized, either

The above picture is actually a section I DID map out. Larry got mad at how haphazard my level was, so he told me to draw him what I wanted for the last few parts, so I did. Kind of.

This was me trying to figure out the boss chase, and also the yellow section.

Above is what turned into the boss. I had a completely different one before, but I like this one better. I do draw out enemies, beause I’m better at designing them than the mechanics. I’m terrible at those.

All in all though, with how unplanned this level was, I’m very happy with it. I can stop creating for a while now and finally focus on the comic (like I’ve needed to for months) … I’m still ahead on the comic, but I’d like to be even farther ahead. This game has been a blessing and a curse at the same time, and I’m happy for it to finally be over.

I am not going to stop playing, far from that, but I can be a bit more casual with that, hopping on early in the morning to play with friends from england and germany, and not having to worry about what I have to do to top my last creation. Centralia and Crystal Cave are the two levels that I really wanted to do, and I did them. I have no regrets, now. Of course that’s not to say I won’t make a joke level or two when I get bored, like Fall of Winter of What’s The Matter.

Anyway, here are my youtube videos of Crystal Cave in Autumn. It’s about twelve minutes if you watch both of them, and it explains a lot about how we work, why we did certain things, etc.

Video 1:

Video 2:

Well, I hope you enjoyed the videos. As they say in LittleBigPlanet, Happy Gadding, and I’ll see you all in LBP. Oh, and the next comic will be online this Sunday, the 22nd, by the way! Hurray!